


Vivid Dreams And Worst Case Scenarios

by akasharpiegirl



Series: I Won’t Leave What’s Lost Behind [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Beyond the grave hes the best dad SHUSH, Gen, Genius Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), I'm very sorry, Irondad, Irondad & Spiderson, Kinda, Lots of Angst, Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) Needs a Hug, Morgan's friend is stupid, Parent Pepper Potts, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Teen Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Tony Stark Has A Heart, almost ten years post endgame, maybe could lead into a series?, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21555709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akasharpiegirl/pseuds/akasharpiegirl
Summary: One of Morgan's friends says something that triggers Morgan's grief over her Dad's death.***“I had a dream about Dad,” Morgan answered. “I talked to him, Mom. It felt so real.”Pepper stared at Morgan and if she was holding onto her coffee in that moment, the glass from the mug would be shattered by now. “I’m sorry, what?”
Relationships: Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Series: I Won’t Leave What’s Lost Behind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656721
Comments: 12
Kudos: 100





	Vivid Dreams And Worst Case Scenarios

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first canon based fic, yikes. Took me what? Eight months to bring myself to write one? I guess that shows you how bad Endgame screwed me up. This may or may not be inspired by that one Hannah Montana episode where Miley dreams that she talked to her Mom again. (Thanks Disney+.) 
> 
> Slight warning for minor cursing. But other than that, it's just straight up angst. Blink and you miss it fluff. 
> 
> Anywho, enjoy it!!

“Can we hang out this weekend? Watch a movie, have a sleepover or something?”, Morgan asked her friend group as she poked at her crappy school lunch. “I’ve got nothing to do. My Mom’s got meetings and my brother has to work overtime this weekend for a project.”

“No, I can’t. My  _ Dad’s _ taking me and my little sister to the city,” Maya, her best friend, stated haphazardly. “I still need to pack. We leave tomorrow after school.”

“Oh, okay. I hope you three have fun,” Morgan quickly responded, stiffing up all of the sudden. “What about you two?”

“Volunteering at my  _ Dad’s _ company all weekend, sorry Morgan,” Alexis said as she continued to read the romance novel she checked out yesterday from the school library.

“I’m with my  _ Dad  _ over the weekend. I don’t get much time with him, so,” Darcy followed after Alexis.

Morgan stayed quiet, still poking at the undercooked pizza with her fork.

“Why don’t you just spend time with your Dad-“, Alexis started to say before—what only Morgan could assume to be— her common sense kicked in.

Morgan immediately dropped the fork on her tray as soon as she heard the statement, looking up at her friends as tears brimmed her eyes. “Because I don’t have my Dad around anymore,” Morgan stated, pulling her things together. The maroon color of her sweatshirt and other figures she could see becoming harder to see the longer that she tried not to cry in front of her friends. “Two of… Two of you are alive thanks to him. Now he’s dead because he was too nice to let a titan tear apart our world again. I’d think something like that, you’d have the brains to remember.” 

“Alexis,” Darcy scolded. “Morgan are you alright-“

“Morgan, I didn’t—“, Alexis tried to say.

She walked away from her group of friends, threw away her uneaten lunch, and found her way to the sea of books she knew so well after running up a flight of stairs. A quiet place, but yet everyone in the room so enveloped in their book, algebra project, or one thousand piece puzzle to know if something could possibly be wrong somewhere else in the room. 

She sat scarily still as she quietly cried, her back against the bookcase filled to the brim with dusty science books. She was the only one aside from the media center specialist and Morgan’s old biology teacher who ever browsed that section of literature.

Morgan wanted her Dad back. Not an apology from Alexis. All she wanted was her Dad, Anthony Edward Stark, alive and healthy. Here. She wished she had more memories of him. She wished she could make more memories like every other kid she knew who had a father active in their lives. 

Why did he have to use the gauntlet? Couldn’t it have been Carol? Stephen Strange? Thor, even? Anyone but her own Dad? The only completely human out there that day. Why, oh why, did it have to be him? The same Dad who told her stories about the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man before tucking her into bed every single night. The same one who taught her to dance. The same person who taught her not to let anyone decide her own worth. The same Dad who ate juice pops with her on the last night that he was alive. Not that he knew. But he had to have known it was a possibility, right? 

Morgan, at that moment, wished that her memory would just quit bouncing old memories into her head as if they were fresh ones. She wished that she didn’t have the ability to remember everything about herself and childhood memories.

She had no idea the bell had rung for third block five minutes before, or that she had been full on sobbing for fifteen minutes straight.

“Oh, Morgan, sweetheart. You’re late for third block, you’re going to need a tardy from the front-“, the media center specialist, Miss. Bailey, stopped herself upon seeing Morgan’s quite sad exterior. 

“You… You act like getting a late pass is the end of the world, M-Miss. Bailey,” Morgan sniffled, picking up her things as she stood. 

“I suppose it’s not. For you at least,” the young woman sympathetically nodded. “Are you okay, dear?”

“I just miss my Dad,” Morgan reluctantly answered. “It happens every once in a while, it’s really not a big deal.” She walked out of the quiet place she loved, stopping at the nearest bathroom to help the puffy and redness etched into her face go away faster before she could go see the front office secretary for a tardy slip and go to the class she wanted to skip out on for its entirety today. 

———

Ever since that moment, she had been crying off and on. Not that she wanted to. (She hated showing emotions, just like Tony hated doing the same.) But, sometimes, when someone rips off the bandaid—Her Dad’s passing— it’s hard to cover up her emotions for a long time. 

Her Mom had already tried the usual stuff she says when Morgan gets like this. But, unfortunately, Pepper saying ‘Dad is with us in our hearts’ and all of her other spiels didn’t help much today.

She was laying on her bed trying to watch her favorite Disney show. But she kept falling in and out of sleep and didn’t want to fall asleep for that matter. 

But she fell asleep sometime later. 

_ The next thing Morgan knew, she was at her desk, staring at an essay draft that was supposed to be written about her family. _

_ Her hands hovering over the keyboard, there had already been paragraphs written about her Mom, her brother Peter, and even her uncles, Happy and Rhodey. She even wrote about what she knew about Aunt Natasha too. But failing to let herself type a thing about her Dad. She kept trying, over and over again. But nothing ever stayed put on the sheet. She exhaled a long sigh as a few stray tears fell down her face. Why was this so hard for her? _

_ “You seem upset, Maguna,” a voice Morgan has heard before, but failed to place, came from the entryway of her room. Morgan ignored the voice, finally typing something she thought was decent but then immediately deleting it off the new page as soon as she proofread it. Up until memories flooded back and so did the voice. No one but her Dad ever called her Maguna. Peter tried to once, Morgan yelled at him for it. Her Dad was the only one. _

_ “Dad?”, Morgan finally spoke. _

_ “That’s me,” he said. _

_ “Oh my God,” Morgan mumbled. _

_ “You want to talk about it?”, Tony questioned as Morgan turned away from her desk. _

_ “Yeah, I guess,” Morgan quickly stated. “How are you here?” _

_ “It’s your subconscious,” Tony answered. “You tell me why I’m here. What’s got you upset?” _

_ “My friend forgot who she was talking to for a second,” Morgan answered, sitting with her Dad at her bay window. “Too wrapped up in her novel, I guess. Anyway, I wanted to go over to one of my friend’s houses and hang out over the weekend, since Mom has work to do. And one of my friends, she… She, uh, asked me why I didn’t just hang out with my Dad— you…Since all my friends were going to be spending time with theirs. Then she immediately remembered you died nine and a half years ago to save kids just like her who were victims of the blip.” _

_ “She was one of them, huh?”, Tony asked. _

_ “Yeah, she was,” Morgan answered. “Darcy was one too actually.” _

_ It was quiet for a moment. _

_ “Dad, can I ask you something?”, Morgan spoke up. _

_ “Hm?”, Tony responded. _

_ “Why’d you do it?”, Morgan asked the question that had been on her mind all day long. “Why did it have to be you?” _

_ “The million dollar question I’ve been expecting, and yet I, unfortunately, don’t have a clear answer for,” Tony sighed. “There’s this long drawn out response I have to give you. But, even for me, it’s hard to wrap my mind around. What do you want me to say?” _

_ “I don’t know,” Morgan answered, shrugging. “Maybe hearing you explain your thought process. I really don’t know, Dad. I just need closure for my grief or something. It’s been almost ten years and I’m still not over it.” _

_ “Well,” Tony paused, looking at his teenage daughter, who looked like she had been crying for hours. “The titan who threw away half of Earth’s population threatened me. Thor and old man Steve too. Well, they were with me. Not sure if the threat weighed so much on them as it did on me. It really wasn’t a threat either, but I perceived it as one. He said that because his original plan failed, he’d use the infinity stones again. To shred your universe down to its last atom. Which meant, I’d have to lose you and Mom. I’d have to lose Peter all over again.” _

_ Morgan nodded, blinking back tears. _

_ “When it came time, he almost had the gauntlet. Fought against Carol in an attempt to keep it to himself. Stephen Strange, you know him. He told me, somehow, that wielding the gauntlet myself was the only way to keep the titan from winning. The realization hit like a ton of bricks. I saw what happened to Bruce earlier that day. No doubt the effect would be worse, even lethal for myself. I hesitated. But I remembered what would happen if I didn’t. I would never, under any circumstances, willingly let you go through pain like what I knew the titan inflicted on half the universe. So I did what had to be done. For you, for Mom, for Peter… I think I’d still be here if your Mom hadn’t told me that I could rest. Too stubborn for that,” Tony admitted. “I saw Peter’s advanced healing try to fix what was happening to him. I saw it fail and try again too many times. He died slower than anyone else did on the last day I saw him before Bruce brought everyone back. It showed me how painful it was to go through that. And no way in hell was I about to let anyone else go through that again.” _

_ “Why you though? Why did it have to be you? Carol was right there,” Morgan asked. _

_ “Dudebros,” Tony answered with a weak laugh. “In all actuality, I don’t know. I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for. Strange knows. He probably knows you have questions about it. If I were you and had questions, I’d probably annoy him until he talked.”  _

_ Morgan rolled her eyes. “I’ve asked him before. Apparently I’m not mature enough to know the truth. I’m fourteen, a sophomore in high school, with morals. But apparently I’m still too immature to know the risk that was at stake. But how bad it truly was cannot possibly be worse than what I’ve spent way too many hours imagining.” _

_ “Fourteen? Holy crap,” Tony changed the subject. “You’re in high school now. A sophomore? You’re growing up way too fast and I’m missing it. That’s not allowed.” _

_ “It’s not your fault. And yeah, high school... I guess school in general is stressing me out too. Colleges are already trying to grab my attention. It’s weird being singled out sometimes. Especially on the days my grief can’t hide. The one place I want to go, won’t even send me an email. On top of that, my chem teacher is pressuring me into entering the state science fair, which could land me going to ISEF. But I don’t know if I even want to,” Morgan vented. _

_ “ISEF?”, Tony asked, letting out a small smile. “What has Mom said about it?” _

_ “She thinks I should give it a try. See what could happen. If I want to,” Morgan answered. “I wasn’t planning on telling her, because I just don’t know if I want to. Maya told her one day when she came over to work on a history project. I was less than pleased.” _

_ “I think you should. Like Mom said, see what happens,” Tony gave his opinion. “You also brought up college. Where are you thinking?” _

_ “I think you know,” Morgan stated matter-of-factly. _

_ Tony weakly laughed again, “Is the college you’re thinking of the same one depicted on your sweatshirt that looks like the same one I gave Peter the day he said MIT was his dream school?” _

_ Morgan nodded, “Yeah, MIT is where I want to go to college. But I actually stole it from Peter.” _

_ Tony continued to smile, “I believe that you can get in, kid. You’re a Stark, of course you will.” He paused. “And did you now?” _

_ “Thank you. And, Peter was over for dinner once during my seventh grade year and I guilted him into giving it to me,” Morgan explained. “He thinks that’s stealing.” _

_ “That sounds like Pete. Though I’m sure he has plenty of sweatshirts and hoodies from his time as a student there,” Tony assured. _

_ “That’s what I said. I get that those hoodies aren’t the same, but before guilting Peter into giving yours to me, the only thing I had that reminded me of you was that little bear you gave me for my fifth birthday,” Morgan answered. “Which I still have. Mom tries to help me when I get in those bouts of grieving. She says you’re not totally gone. But sometimes, just those two things… Your MIT sweatshirt and that teddy bear, seem to be a clutch for me when I’m overwhelmed by, you know… everything.”  _

_ “Mom’s not wrong,” Tony stated. _

_ “What?”, Morgan asked. _

_ “I’m not one hundred percent gone,” Tony clarified.  _

_ “No, I know what you said. I’m asking why you say that,” Morgan answered.  _

_ “Have you ever heard people tell you how much you look like me, act like me, among other things?”, Tony asked her. “Don’t lie to me though. Because if I can see it, others can too.” _

_ “Sometimes,” Morgan answered. “Except I’m much more introverted, so I’m told at least. I think I’m pretty much in the middle of the extroversion and introversion spectrum though. Mom says I’m just as sarcastic as you. I call people on their bullshit when I see it. It’s actually funny seeing people squirm when they remember that I can remember anything I’ve seen and heard.” _

_ “You honestly seem like an Ambivert. And the sarcasm. You were already taking college level sarcasm classes from me at five years old,” Tony answered, laughing slightly. “And, wait. You can actually remember everything? I knew we thought you could. But, wow.” _

_ “Yeah, I can. Almost everything I have seen, heard... It weirds me out sometimes, but,” Morgan answered. “That’s actually why it didn’t take me too long to remember where the nickname Maguna came from. I remember a lot about you, actually. If I didn’t have it, there’s probably no way I’d remember you. No offense.” _

_ “It’s neuroscience, not offended,” Tony answered. “Anyhow, I know it’s cheesy and cliche, but I’m always with you. In your heart.” _

_ “Mom says that,” Morgan paused. “All. The. Time.” _

_ “I know, but she’s right. And you’ve got to believe her,” Tony stated.  _

_ “I just want you here. Outside of my brain. In real life, you know?”, Morgan asked. _

_ Tony nodded. _

_ “I.. I just want you back. I want to work in the lab with you and Peter. I wish… wish that you would be here to see me graduate from high school, then MIT hopefully. I want you to give me away at my wedding, like it’s supposed to be. But it’s probably going to be Peter or Happy that does. It should be you,” Morgan rambled. “I want you to scare my first boyfriend. Tell him how you’ll ruin his whole life if he breaks my heart. Which you know, going through breakups are unavoidable. And when that does happen, I wish I’d have my Dad’s shoulder to cry on. You acting all sad for me, saying there’s someone better out there for me. Then two minutes later when you’re in another room, thinking I can’t hear you... B-but all I can hear is you screaming ‘Thank God that’s over’ to Mom because you saw it coming from the very beginning and I failed to.” Morgan blinked away tears. “Just wanting to protect me, you know. Every single one of my friends are complaining about their Dads actually caring about them. When I’d give almost anything to get mine— you back.” _

_ It was quiet for a moment, “Believe me, I want that too, Maguna. But, I don’t think you’d want to go on that journey in an attempt to bring me back. At least not in the long run. Plus knowing your mother, she wouldn’t dare let you out of the house with a suit and over a million possibilities of your journey failing. I wouldn’t want that for you. Like I said, I’d never want you to go through what so many people did. There’s a chance that could happen.” _

_ “But here’s the thing, she wouldn’t know at all. And, I think I could get out alive,” Morgan disagreed.  _

_ “Yes, she would know,” Tony cautioned.  _

_ “How do you know?”, Morgan questioned. _

_ “I tried to hide the fact that I was making armor from her, this happened back in 2013. Did not work,” Tony stated. “You’re just like me, keeping things from people is not a skill either of us have. Promise me you won’t go asking Strange for the key to the past.” _

_ “Fine. I promise,” Morgan stated, even though that answer didn’t sit well with her. _

_ And just like that, music came playing through her phone. Carry On, Wayward Son by Kansas—a song introduced to her by Peter, was the song she woke up to every single school day. _

_ Morgan looked at the time, rolling her eyes. It was 6:00 AM on a Friday.  _

_ “I think that means you need to wake up, kiddo,” Tony stated. “Take on the day.” _

_ “I know,” Morgan frowned as the two stood up. “Dad?” _

_ “That’s my name,” Tony answered. _

_ She hugged him. “I love you, Dad.” _

_ Tony smiled in the hug, “I love you too, Morgan. It’s going to be okay.” _

Pepper walked by Morgan’s room, hearing the Kansas song start to play for the third time this morning. She stopped right before going downstairs, turned around, and cracked Morgan’s door open.

Morgan was asleep (or at least looked asleep) and she was hugging onto the teddy bear that Tony had bought her for her fifth birthday.

She knocked on the doorway of Morgan’s room, “Morgan, sweetheart, it’s time to get up. If you don’t get up now, Happy’s gonna have to take you to school.”

Morgan pulled her blanket over her head, “No.”

Yep, definitely awake. 

“FRIDAY, turn off Morgan’s alarm please,” Pepper quietly said, but loud enough for FRIDAY to hear her.

The song faded out.

“Morgan, you gotta work with me here,” Pepper paused. “Tell me whether you want me to take you to school or not.”

“I’ll go with you,” Morgan mumbled, getting out of bed. 

“How’d you sleep? Any weird dreams?”, Pepper asked, seeing the tired look on her daughter’s face. 

“Actually, yeah. I’ll explain in a minute,” Morgan answered, grabbing clothes from her dresser before walking out of her room to the bathroom to change. “It’s not a big deal, I just need to think through it.”

Pepper raised her eyebrow before walking downstairs to make her coffee.

Pepper sat down at the dining table with her coffee, next to Morgan, who was about to finish her breakfast. “So, do you want to talk about it?”, Pepper asked.

“I had a dream about Dad,” Morgan answered. “I talked to him, Mom. It felt so real.”

Pepper stared at Morgan and if she was holding onto her coffee in that moment, the glass from the mug would be shattered by now. “I’m sorry, what?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
